I was talking to a DBA recently – we’ll call her Susan – who has maybe five years in the industry. Susan was worried because she’d recently made some mistakes that she felt too “experienced” for.
“I should be past this by now!” she told me.
Well, no. Not necessarily.
Growing up in the Data family
You’ve heard the term “baby DBA” and “senior DBA” before, right? Obviously, we’d all see a baby DBA as a brand-new DBA – maybe one who hasn’t even gotten her first tech job yet, or someone who’s only been the “accidental DBA” for a few months.
We can debate about what constitute a senior DBA. Does she need to have 10 years to be a senior? Or, all of a Microsoft SQL Server cert track completed? In any case, a senior should Know Important Things and be reasonably confident.
Not quite senior yet
But what about midlevel DBAs? I might start calling them data teenagers, because midlevel DBAs – like midlevel DBAs:
- Are clearly not babies any more.
- Know plenty of things, but are still learning a lot.
- May not be quite sure what they want to do in the long term.
- Often don’t feel like they know what they’re doing, but try very hard to seem competent.
- Are not remotely past making “simple” mistakes.
To be clear, senior DBAs (like grown-up persons) aren’t past making simple mistakes either; we just make them less often than when we were in our “teens”. Hopefully.
You’ll get there
Disasters happen. Mistakes happen. We overlook things, or don’t see something coming. A good DBA does her best, and learns from mistakes and oversights. (A bad DBA doesn’t, which is why “10 years of experience” does not automatically mean “senior DBA”.)
So give yourself a break, buckaroo. You’ve just got some more growing up to do.